Page:Macfadden's Fasting, Hydropathy and Exercise.djvu/137

Rh ask with a look of alarm, when a stranger approaches their wigwams.

The German, Austrian, and Russian shepherds stay the whole summer with their flocks, but as a class, are nevertheless remarkably subject to pulmonary diseases, and for the following reason: They pass the night in a Schaefer-huette, a sort of ambulance-box, eight feet by four, and six feet high, without windows, but with a tight-fitting sliding door. This door the ill-advised proprietor shuts after dark, and breathes all night the azotized air of his Black Hole of Calcutta on wheels. In the morning he awakens with a hacking cough, superadded to profuse perspiration, and a feeling of nausea. The air of the mountains gradually relieves the other symptoms, but not the cough, which finally becomes chronic. And, with exquisite facilities for the attainment of a patriarchal longevity, the slave of the night-air superstition thus dies in the forenoon of his life.

Cold baths—in air or water—and thorough ventilation become more necessary with every degree further south, and a Spanish army-surgeon of Santiago de Cuba a few years ago surprised the medical faculty with the success of his experiments in the artificial refrigeration of a